50 Great Works

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50 GREAT WORKS OF WESTERN LITERATURE:

A SELECTED READING GUIDE FOR CHRISTIAN READERS

Steve Baarendse, Department of English and Humanities

Columbia International University, South Carolina

August 15, 2002

A. EARLY CHRISTIAN AND MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

1. ST. AUGUSTINE, CONFESSIONS (397-398) BR65.A6 E5 1907

As the first autobiography ever written and a truthful account of one man’s rescue from the cesspool of

sin to new life in Christ, Confessions stands as one of the most moving redemption stories of all time.In these pages we find not the venerable Bishop of Hippo, arguably the greatest of all Church Fathers,

but a wretched youth who steals orchard pears for the sake of stealing and struggles with hypocrisy and

lust—a human being like ourselves. Augustine’s description of childhood, unique in classical

literature, is shockingly frank: “I was a great sinner for so small a boy.” You’ll appreciate the booktoo for its rich devotional content; this is an intimate conversation with God that’s saturated with

Scripture. John Calvin believed that knowledge of God and knowledge of self can’t be separated; thisis the book that proves the truth of his statement. The title has two meanings: Augustine confesses his

sins to God with deep repentance; he also confesses, without apology, his Christian faith to the world.

“You made us for Yourself,” the author tells God in the first paragraph, “and our hearts find no peace

until they rest in You.” The remainder of the book elaborates beautifully on this statement; Augustinecelebrates the grace of a Sovereign God, expressed most movingly to him in the relentless intercessory

prayers of Monica, the paragon of all Christian mothers.

2. ANONYMOUS, BEOWULF (c. 9th Century) PR1583.W74 1957

The northern world of Beowulf , that great Anglo-Saxon epic tale of monsters and heroes, is grim,sunless, and as dense as primordial pea soup. Its depths may elude readers who skim through their

Cliff’s Notes in the more carefree days of high school British literature survey. The poem is valuablefor its gritty depiction of the life-and-death struggle between good and evil. Evil never sleeps, but men

unfortunately do. The hideous monsters of destruction, Grendel and his mother, can’t be wished

away—if they aren’t slain in bloody hand-to-hand combat, men will die. Beowulf faces the evil headon, and in the struggle heroically lays down his life for his brethren. We may see in Beowulf the

prototype of William Wallace, the creative inspiration for Tolkien, or perhaps an echo of our great

champion Jesus Christ. We can also grasp why terrorism must be fought in the wake of 9/11. It’shealthy for us, in our eviscerated age, to learn from a time when men knew the meaning of valor. This

epic song of peril, courage, and divine providence unveils the conflict of life at its bare-boned roots. It

should remind us that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12) and that we are allcalled upon to awake from our sleep and fight before we may feast in the banqueting halls.

3. DANTE, DIVINE COMEDY (c. 1320) PQ4315.C4 1937

Few but the most adventurous readers today will ever immerse themselves in the complicated medieval

theological-cosmological scheme of Dante’s massive Divina Commedia —called a “comedy” because

it begins disastrously (in hell) and ends well (in heaven). For those brave souls who take the plungeinto the grandest epic poem in European literature, Dante’s guided tour of the universe will afford


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startling insights. In the Inferno, evangelical readers might ponder why medievals foresaw a harsher

punishment for the more “invisible” sins of the intellect (hypocrisy, pride) than for the more “visible”sins of fleshly indulgence (lust, gluttony). Another instructive feature of the Inferno is the mechanism

of divine retribution: by the inexorable law of contrapasso, the punishment fits the crime and the

eternal consequences sinners suffer turn out to be poetic versions of their sin. Thus, lovers caught in

fornication on earth are tossed around forever in a fickle gale of passion in hell, joined to one anotherwithout respite. Gluttons who gorged their bodies like swine are doomed to wallow in an eternal

rainstorm of filth. Suicides, who violently divorced their souls from their bodies, are blasted trees with

skins hanging on their bleeding limbs. As we follow our guide down to lower levels of hell, theweather grows increasingly cold and objects become heavier; in Dante’s Inferno, the law of gravity

works and hell truly does “freeze over.” The lowest pit is a lake of ice, not fire. This, the point

furthest removed from the gracious love of God, represents the heaviness and coldness of the humanheart weighed down by sin. It helps to have a knowledge of medieval history when reading Dante: his

discussions of theology, politics, and poetry make sense only in historical context; and if we know that

he wrote his poem in lifelong exile from his beloved Florence, we will better understand why herelegated some of his contemporary Florentines and even Pontiffs to various circles of hell. Students

of church history will be interested to read the Paradiso, the third part of the epic’s trilogy, where atthe gates of heaven St. Peter is moved to angry tears as he decries the corruption of the medieval

church. Two centuries before Luther’s Reformation, Dante anticipated the church’s need for it.

4. ANONYMOUS, EVERYMAN (c. 1495) PR1260.E9 1959

Man knows not his time. In the midst of the whirligig of life, Death may unexpectedly summon him

to give an account before his Maker. If this sounds like an evangelism drama, it is; in the late MiddleAges, the church used allegorical street drama to instruct the illiterate masses in orthodox doctrine.

And in a day when plague, fire, famine, and war wiped out entire cities, the message of this play was

keenly felt—naked you come and naked you will depart. Faced with his imminent departure from theworld, Everyman begs his old friends—companions, family, possessions—to accompany him on his

journey, but they all abandon him. What he’s left with is knowledge and good works, and it’s a signof the urgent need for European Reformation that Everyman is able to plead his account before God onthe merit of his good works, not on the blood of Christ shed for his sins. Apart from faulty theology

and characterization that seems wooden after Shakespeare, Everyman serves as a stark reminder of the

brevity of our life, the vanity of our earthly pleasures, and the reality that someday we too will becalled to give an account before our Maker.

II. RENAISSANCE LITERATURE (16th

AND 17th

CENTURY)

5. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, PRAISE OF FOLLY (1511) PA8514.E5 1979

Erasmus, the genial cosmopolitan Dutch humanist, was the superstar intellect of his day. He enjoyedcelebrity status in all the courts of Europe; he published the first Greek text of the New Testament.Erasmus’ happiest days were spent in England with his humanist friend Sir Thomas More, to whom

he dedicated his tour de force of satirical wit, Praise of Folly. The book is an extended speech, spoken

mockingly by the woman Folly (cf. Prov. 8-9), whose “folly,” held up to the right light, often looks alot like wisdom. In the disguise of the “wise fool” that Shakespeare would later adopt for his court

jesters, Erasmus ridicules--now gently, now acerbically—the manifold vices of church and society. As

Folly wisely says, “it is the privilege of fools to speak the truth without giving offense.” But offense


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was taken; the Catholic Church soon placed Praise of Folly on their growing list of banned books. For

Christian readers, the best section comes at the end of Folly’s discourse, where she praises the “folly”of Christ and His followers. She quotes Paul’s “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to

shame the wise” and shows how Christ “calls those who are destined for eternal life his sheep, though

there is no animal so stupid.” The tone in this section is one of piety, and we sense that we’re on holy

ground. Thus one of the great scholarly jests of the Renaissance, by its most brilliant humanist, comesto end on a surprising note of humility. It was Erasmus’ tragedy that he clearly saw the corruption of

the Roman Church but was not willing to cast his lot with the Reformation. Like his friend Thomas

More, who was beheaded by Henry VIII a year before Erasmus died, he ultimately came to be trapped between the grinding plates of seismic historical change.

6. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, PLAYS (c. 1590-1610) PR2754.K5

Shakespeare, “the swan of Avon,” is the greatest author in the English language. His genius isuniversal in scope: it’s said that every type of person who has ever lived can be found pictured in the

gigantic portrait gallery of his 37 plays. His psychological insight into human character and

motivation—along with his mastery of technical words and slang from every field of human

endeavor—is so astonishing that some doubt the glover’s son from Stratford could have written all the plays. It’s said that A.W. Tozer, the late Chicago preacher, read the works of Shakespeare on his

knees, asking God to give him wisdom. So have many Christians over the last four centuries.Shakespeare wrote his plays when modern English was still wet cement; his “King’s English” may

sound antiquated to readers now, but its beauty of cadence and imagery is unparalleled in English

literature. No other poet, after all, is known to us simply as “the bard.” Hidden beneath the archaic

language lies a great treasure of insight into human nature for those who are patient enough to dig. It’simportant to remember, when reading Shakespeare, that he intended the plays for lively communal

experience in a theater, not for academic dissection on a lifeless page. Amazingly, during his lifetime

he seems to have cared nothing about their publication in print.

Shakespeare’s plays are divided into histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances. My personal

favorites are Henry IV (Part I) and Henry V (histories); The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night (comedies); Romeo and Juliet , Julius

Caesar , Hamlet , Othello, King Lear , and Macbeth (tragedies); and The Tempest (romance). The

greatest Shakespeare plays, and the most difficult to perform on stage, are the mature tragedies Hamlet and King Lear . In these masterpieces the bard plumbs depths of human experience that stretch the

possibilities of dramatic representation to the breaking point.

7. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, DON QUIXOTE (I: 1604, II: 1616) PQ6329.A2 1962

The chivalrous madman Don Quixote takes his place with Erasmus’ Folly and Shakespeare’s court

jesters in a sizable collection of Renaissance fools. His is an extraordinary madness. Having read a

roomful of medieval romance novels, he imagines himself to be a knight and sallies off in quest ofadventures that will redress the evils of the world and win him personal glory. Obviously, the modern

world that receives this idealistic “knight” thinks his brain has been fried in the hot Spanish sun. Hisdelusions often seem to create more wrongs than they right. But Don Quixote is not so easily

categorized: he seems to be the only man in La Mancha who orders his life according to a highermoral code than the normal mercenary opportunism; animated by this code, he alone exhibits real

courage where others run away. “For I well know what valor is,” he says, after he stands fearlessly

before an open cage of lions, and we believe him. His speech often comes across as perfectly sane.


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With his simple-ton sidekick Sancho Panza, he exhibits all of the qualities of a natural leader: he

causes Sancho to believe in a greater vision and quest than farming, he models courage to the point ofsuffering personal disaster, and his actions always back up his words. The end is ambiguous, but it’s

clear that the realist Sancho has become an ardent convert of his master’s dream. This sprawling tome

of 1,000 pages is generally considered the father of the modern novel and one of its great expressions.

Cervantes holds the mirror up to a world teetering unstably between the medieval and the modern, theideal and the real, the “wise” and the “foolish.” The mirrors multiply, and what he leaves us is a

baffling self-reflecting world that resembles the postmodern one we live in today.

8. JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST (1674) Oversize PR3560.A1 1900

Without question, this is the greatest poem written in the English language. Milton considered his 300- page, 12-book epic tale of the fall of angels and mankind, followed by the redemption of mankind in

Christ, to be his one great calling in life. Ironically, he was too busy to write it until after he became

completely blind (he dictated the entire poem from memory to his daughters). This blind man’s visual

imagination is stunning: his portrayal of hell as “darkness visible” is a fitting description of hisuncanny ability to imagine a teeming world through his blindness. Paradise Lost is full of dramatic

visual detail; you may think you’re watching a movie in which characters deliver long speeches. It’salso crammed with obscure classical and Biblical allusions, which combined with the author’s grand,latinate verse style can make it a challenging read for newcomers. For those who patiently persist, the

poem pays rich rewards. The most exciting passages are Books I-IV, which range majestically

between the assembly of the fallen angels in hell, the plan of redemption in heaven, and the journey ofSatan through chaos to earth. The monumental scope and design of these passages is unequalled in all

of literature. Also, don’t miss Milton’s vivid, dramatic interpretation of the Gen. 3:1-7 temptation and

fall of man in Book IX. This poem was considered so massive that it paralyzed writers for centuries

afterward. No other significant English epic poem has been written since. In the last century, C. S.Lewis was a careful student of Milton. His science-fiction novel, Perelandra, owes a great conceptual

debt to Paradise Lost ; his short book, A Preface to Paradise Lost , offers one of the best Christian

introductions into the universe of Milton’s poem.

9. JOHN BUNYAN, PILGRIM’S PROGRESS (I: 1678, II: 1684) PR3330.A1 1965a

Pilgrim’s Progress is the greatest allegory of the Christian life ever written; the simple proof is that it

has been translated into more languages, and has sold more copies, than any book besides the Bible.Bunyan was a Puritan preacher who was imprisoned for preaching biblical truth during the troubled

years after the death of Cromwell and the ousting of Puritans from pulpits across England. The book’s

timeless vigor is that it was born out of adversity and suffering; Bunyan conceived and wrote it fromhis prison cell. Those who wished to silence him could imprison his body, but his mind and

imagination, rooted in Christ, soared free. The central message of the book is that the road to the

Celestial City is long, narrow, and difficult—“through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of

God” (Acts 14:22). Many fall away and few end well. As such, this old Puritan allegory of perseverance through suffering is a desperately needed antidote to the lie of cheap grace we package

and sell as American evangelicalism today. (It would be interesting to conjecture where Bunyan might

have placed Schuller’s lavish Crystal Cathedral in the scheme of his novel.) Because the world doesn’tchange in its essential types (Vanity Fair is Hollywood and Madison Avenue today), the book’s

significance will never go out of style. Since its first publication, Pilgrim’s Progress has clearly

communicated the gospel to readers of every generation. It should be a great model to aspiringChristian writers of how a sanctified literary imagination may be consecrated to the service of truth.


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III. ENLIGHTENMENT LITERATURE (18th

CENTURY)

10. DANIEL DEFOE, ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719) PR3403.A1 1903

This forerunner of the modern novel is much more than an adventure story of a shipwreck. If read

only as an adventure, the book could disappoint. Dialogue is nonexistent because the hero spends a

quarter of a century in solitude; also, since he is trapped on an island, exploration is limited to a con-scribed radius. The value of this book is actually spiritual and psychological rather than physical—

Crusoe must come to terms with himself, his Creator, and his surroundings in his state of isolation.

What the castaway learns in what turns out to be a long internal monologue is nothing less than thegreat mystery of contentment. Reading from his Bible (the most precious object saved from the

sinking ship), Cru-soe grows in his reliance on the Sovereignty and Providence of God. He repents

and prays frequently. Obviously, these sizable politically-incorrect “religious” parts are neatly

chopped out of the harmless survival-tale versions taught in public schools today. Make sure you readthe unabridged version; you may be surprised to discover that Robinson Crusoe is a great work of

Christian fiction. Of course, no one would publish a book like this today: for evangelicals who market

LaHaye-Jenkins bestsellers, the language would be considered too difficult; for the rest of the world,

too “religiously offensive.”

11. JONATHAN SWIFT, A MODEST PROPOSAL (1729) PR3724.G8 1981

In six pages of elegant, deadpan prose, the master of 18th

century satire sets forth an ingenious solution

to alleviate the Irish famine: poor people should dismember and eat their babies. “A young healthychild well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed,

roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.”

Swift’s intention, of course, is to shock his readers out of their moral turpitude: by pushing the ethics

of utilitarianism to an absurd but logical extreme, he shows how civilized people may become barbarians when they divorce reason from God’s moral law. In the prism of this masterful satire we

can see the ruthless rationale proposed by Nazi leaders for a “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem.

We may also gain a better understanding of the long-term implications of our own society’s pragmatic justification for abortion-on-demand and deadly harvesting of human embryos for their “spare parts.”

The terrible irony is that in cannibalizing its young to satisfy short-term gratification, a civilizationeffectively commits suicide. Sadly, today we must acknowledge that Swift was a prophet.

IV. 19th

CENTURY LITERATURE

12. JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813) PZ3.A93 Pr 1945

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in

want of a wife.” From the frank opening line to the compelling finale of Austen’s brilliant domestic

comedy of early 19th-century manners and morals, the course of true love never does run smooth.Without question, this is the crown jewel of Austen’s novels—the book rides out a slew of

miscommunications and emotional turbulence with the stylistic grace and structural symmetry of a

Mozart rondo. Austen exhibits an unusual talent for sketching her characters indirectly, mostlythrough what they unwittingly betray in their speech, “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth

speaks.” The book’s sixty short chapters are filled with witty repartee and move at a brisk pace. As

with Sense and Sensibility, the title is the key to the novel’s theme—focusing on the traits of pride and prejudice in people, Austen shows how peoples’ appearances often belie their true character, how the


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first impressions we form of others can often prove disastrously wrong. As the heroine Elizabeth

Bennet learns the hard way, this is no where more tricky than in the delicate realm of courtship. Twoof the most colorful characters in literature inhabit this novel: the ironic, reclusive Mr. Bennet, who

leaves the protection of his library only to be amused by the emotional imbroglios of his weak-minded

wife and five daughters; and the insufferable Mr. Collins, who is so full of false humility and pompous

speech that he doesn’t see he’s a buffoon. You’ll find great psychological insight into human natureand relationships in this novel. If you like tongue-in-cheek British dialogue, with all of its catty,

restrained play of irony and understatement, this one’s a treat.

13. MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN (1818) PZ3.S545 Fr 1963a

People who think they know Frankenstein are generally mistaken on two counts. First, they wrongly

suppose the book is named after the monster. In fact, it’s named after the Swiss doctor who creates the

monster, and the book is more about the doctor than the monster. Second, people mistakenly think thatthis book serves up cheap horror as entertainment—like Dracula. Nothing could be further from the

truth. Shelley’s Frankenstein is a disturbingly modern meditation on what happens when man uses

science to imitate God’s work of creation. What happens, of course, is that he fouls it up. And he

doesn’t only foul it up for himself—he causes the world around him to groan for his stupidity in playing God. The reason Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster instead of a human is that his creation can

only be in the image of man, not in the image of God . For all his technological genius, man can’treproduce the divine spark—the human soul. Along with Jonathan Swift’s short satirical essay, A

Modest Proposal , this experimental fantasy—written on a whim—may be one the best literary works

for understanding the moral implications of genetic engineering, especially as our knowledge of DNA

makes stem-cell manipulation and cloning increasingly viable. What happens in this book is that thecreature turns against his human creator, who comes to regret bitterly that he has overstepped the

boundaries of science.

14. ALEXANDRE DUMAS, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (1844)

On the level of sheer plot ingenuity, this sprawling, swashbuckling adventure set in France’srevolutionary Napoleonic Age can’t be beat. The theme of the novel is calculated revenge, and the

moral question Dumas poses is the extent to which God’s prerogative in visiting retribution may becarried out by human agents. The young Edmond Dantes, wrongfully sentenced for fifteen years to an

impenetrable fortress off the coast of Marseilles, escapes to transform himself into the elegant,

mysterious, and fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. To his friends he appears as the angel ofthe Lord; to his enemies he is the angel of death. Convinced of his divine mandate to embody God’s

Providence and meet out justice on his fellow mortals, Monte Cristo orchestrates his revenge with the

imperturbable efficiency of a master-conductor—until the end of the novel, that is, when he learns alesson about the difference between God’s vengeance and our own. The novel is more accessible, and

doesn’t suffer plot damage, if read in an abridged version.

15. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, JANE EYRE (1847) PR4167.J35 1941

Like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre is a simple heroine with a remarkable inner

life. The novel chronicles her growth in character from a troubled childhood to—well, you’ll have tosee, because this is part of the novel’s secret. It would be a great mistake for male readers to dismiss

Bronte’s masterpiece as a “chick book.” Mr. Rochester, Jane’s master, is one of the most gnarly,

conflicted, and, well, MALE males in the history of literature. He’s like a rough WWF wrestler withintelligence and heart. Jane Eyre is one of the most poetically written novels you’ll ever find; every


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sentence is a carefully-polished gem. But it’s not only the perfection of style that makes this a great

book for Christians to read. Unlike Austen’s novel, this is a Bible-saturated book, from the obliqueallusions to Nebuchadnezzer’s humiliation to passages that recreate the poetry of suffering from the

book of Psalms. It would be difficult to understand the novel fully without having grown up in Sunday

School; one might even dare to call this novel “more Christian” than many of the bestsellers published

as “Christian” today. At the heart of the novel’s mystery, Jane Eyre is faced with an ethical test thatscrews all of her integrity of character to the sticking point. What unfolds is a rare lesson in the value

of delayed gratification, and a compelling picture of sacrificial love forged in the furnace of suffering.

16. CHARLES DICKENS, A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859) PZ3.D55 Ta 1942

This is the best novel written by an Englishman about the French Revolution; it’s also one of the most

compelling parables in literature of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Dickens wrote the

novel in serial installments, and it shows: every chapter is carefully crafted and leaves the readerhungry for more. Symbols and themes are tightly woven in the intricate plot; the suspense is

cumulative. In all his novels Dickens is a master of characterization, and here he’s at the top of his

game: every main character in the novel carries a secret that in some way contributes to the climactic

conclusion. The gifted, shadowy Sydney Carton is one of the most intriguing of all Dickens’characters. Dickens takes time to warm up in Book I—he’s carefully setting the stage; by Book III,

with his imagination plunged into the maniacal cauldron of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, he’s reallycooking. It’s one thing to read the historical facts about the French Revolution in a textbook; it’s

another to experience the terrific frenzy directly in the imaginative recreation of a master novelist. The

last chapter, with its elegiac combination of poetic imagery and prophecy, is unforgettable.

17. LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865) Juvenile PZ8.D666 An

This book, along with its companion Through the Looking-Glass (1871), is most often thought of as“children’s literature,” but though children will find it wildly entertaining (if a bit nightmarish), they

won’t catch any of the deeper levels of irony and mathematical-philosophical paradoxes Carroll

included for his adult readers. Carroll was a mathematics professor at Oxford, and this is what resultswhen the mind of a stodgy bachelor-genius takes a vacation from his math classes. Fall down the

rabbit hole with Alice and meet a wild assembly of unlikely characters and situations in a topsy-turvyworld that curiously mirrors our own. Comb it for intricate levels of meaning, or simply enjoy it for its

glorious freeplay of imagination.

18. FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1866) PG3326.P7 S35 1963

Dostoevsky is heavy Russian meat not recommended for the faint of heart. You don’t read his novelsfor descriptions of scenery; his “scenery” is the troubled psychological landscape of the human soul.

This is the huge story of a Russian college student who, thinking that he can live above the law,

commits a terrible crime, and for the rest of the novel pays the punishment for it. This is a grim tale of

consequences: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Apart from the Bible, it would be difficult to finda deeper investigation of “the law of God written on man’s conscience” (Rom. 2:15). Dostoevsky’s

characters are grotesque and unlovable; their conversations are high-strung and often ascend to fever

pitch. The pace has a nervous energy. Translations of Dostoevsky vary in effectiveness: for perhapsthe best preservation of the freshness and pace of the Russian dialogue, buy the Vintage Classics trans-

lation done in 1992 by Pevear and Volokhonsky. This is a book that many Christian leaders list as one

that has had a great impact on their lives. If you stomach this novel, you might tackle the challenge of


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The Brothers Karamazov, his final and perhaps greatest presentation of all the untidy paradoxes of the

human condition.

19. LEO TOSTOY, ANNA KARENINA (1875-77) PZ3.T588 An

This novel, along with War and Peace, is the towering masterpiece of the other great Russian novelist

of the late 19th

century. Its main plot focuses on the causes and consequences of the title character’ssin of adultery. Needless to say, the consequences are not good. The large subplot tracks the fortunes

of a rural landowner named Konstantine Levin. Tolstoy draws Levin very sympathetically; in contrastto the cultivated hypocrisies of society in the city, we grow to love him and the peasants who work his

land. This is one of the great novels of 19th

century Russian Realism; read it to travel back in time to

an exotic foreign continent. Tolstoy will give you a window of insight into the Russian soul; you’llalso see that he thoroughly disliked the modern influence of trains.

20. HENRIK IBSEN, A DOLL’S HOUSE (1879) PT8851 1928

Ibsen is considered the father of modern drama because he was the first to take the embarrassingdomestic living room squabbles of the Victorian Age and present them on center stage for everyone to

see. His plays were the 19th century version of our soap operas and sitcoms. Whether one considersthe works to be high art or emotional exhibitionism, it’s certain that Ibsen was a masterful propagandist and a shrewd businessman. Though a surly misogynist in life, he made a fortune styling

himself as the first great literary liberator of women: his plays usually contain laughably weak or

boorishly self-righteous men playing opposite strong, neurotic, repressed women. In A Doll’s House,Ibsen’s most famous play, Nora grows up out of her childish world of make-believe and play-acting to

discover her true “self.” The problem is that her personal awakening coincides with an unnatural

casting-off of her conjugal and maternal responsibility to her husband and three children. What Ibsen

seems to propose in this play is hardly a model for successful marital conflict resolution. If anything,ironically, we see the dangerous social disintegration caused by feminism. A Doll’s House is

instructive reading for those who wish to understand the deep social roots of today’s domestic

tragedies; for Christians, the play will make God’s design for marriage appear so much sweeter, bycontrast.

21. EDWIN ABBOTT, FLATLAND (1884) QA699.A13 1992

This curious little book, subtitled “A Romance of Many Dimensions,” is a geometric fantasy—a rareform of late-Victorian science fiction. The main character is a very “normal” two-dimensional square

living in his country of Flatland who, when suddenly visited by a sphere, becomes acquainted with a

three-dimensional world (Spaceland) he never believed existed. His journey to other dimensions, andhis imprisonment as a madman back in Flatland for preaching the heresy of three dimensions--these

are the fabulous events chronicled in Part II of this bizarre tale. Obviously, more is at stake here than

geo-metry. By analogy, Abbott shows us a fictitious world that turns out to be our own. Christians,

who like the square have been drawn out of their ignorance and called to proclaim a higher“dimension” which is foolishness to the natural man (I Cor. 2:14), will find much to ponder in

Abbott’s ingenious parable.

22. LEO TOLSTOY, THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH (1886) PZ3.T588 Wo

After completing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote no word of fiction for nine years. The culmination ofthis crisis was this short novel which examines in excruciating psychological detail the gradual decline

and death of a successful middle-aged businessman who, in a freak accident, is stricken with a terminal


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illness at a time when he’s not prepared to leave this world. Tolstoy may be hearkening back to the

medieval typology of Everyman—“Ivan Ilyich” is the Russian equivalent of “John Doe”—but hisallegorical protagonist is surprisingly contemporary. Ilyich is the rich merchant of Jesus’ parable

whose “soul is required of him” at the height of his prosperity (Luke 12:20). This is the most powerful

novel I’ve read for placing the reader right into the anguished skin of a slowly-dying man. The

psychological portrait Tolstoy draws is so convincing that it seems he must have had direct knowledgeof the experi-ence he describes. This book will help you to understand the mind of the terminally ill.

23. THOMAS HARDY, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1886) PZ3.H222 Ma 1969

From the drunken bargain in the first chapter when Michael Henchard sells his wife at a county fair to

the dramatic conclusion, this is a novel dominated by one gigantic man and the even more gigantic

Fate that overcomes him. The theme of the novel is ambition and its consequences. Here is English

tragedy on an epic Shakespearean scale; you couldn’t pick a better introduction to the forces ofcharacter and environment which dominate all of Hardy’s novels. What Hardy calls Fate, though, we

know to be the Sovereign judgment of a God who will not be mocked, and causes men to reap what

they sow (Gal. 6:7).

24. JEROME K. JEROME, THREE MEN IN A BOAT (1889) N/A

Here’s one for comic relief. If you like dry British humor, you’ll love this quirky book. Threesarcastic upper-middle-class men and a pet dog named Montmerency take a leisurely boat holiday

down the Thames River. For those who savor a well-turned phrase like fine wine, this one’s priceless.

25. OSCAR WILDE, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891) PR5819.A1 1993

England’s literary prodigy and libertine sensualist, Oscar Wilde, lived and died for the philosophy of

“art for art’s sake.” Even though he disclaimed all morality, his one great novel The Picture of Dorian

Gray shows with iron inexorability God’s law of moral cause and effect, of sin and its consequences

on the soul. Dorian Gray abandons himself to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—and with reckless impunity, because like an alabaster Greek statue or a perfect portrait

his body never registers the ill effects of his lifestyle. On the outside, he remains a perfect Adonis—

beautiful, young, seemingly incorruptible. But inside, his soul becomes an ugly picture of decay. Inthis novel, evil wears a fair face, but there are hideous maggots crawling beneath the surface of the

mask. Wilde may have been shaping the hypocrisy of his own life into art—if so, his work turned out

to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just four years after Dorian Gray shocked the literary world, thecelebrated aesthete who authored it was sentenced to the degradation of prison for his homosexual

lifestyle. This novel shows that you always reap what you sow, and if you sow to the flesh, from the

flesh you’ll reap corruption (Gal. 6:7-8). For its fixation on youth and sensual gratification at the

expense of “the hidden person of the heart” (I Pet. 3:4), Dorian Gray is a remarkably lifelike portrait ofthe grinning face and decadent soul of the America we live in today.


10/10

These titles to be added soon . . .

26. KATE CHOPIN, THE AWAKENING (1899) N/A

V. 20

th

CENTURY LITERATURE

27. JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS (1902) PZ3.C764 Ps9

28. KENNETH GRAHAME, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS (1908) Juvenile PZ10.3.G76 Wi

29. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE GREAT GATSBY (1925) PS3511.I9 G7 1953

30. ERICH REMARQUE, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1928) PZ3.R443.A4 1967

31. ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) PZ3.H981 Br 1969

32. ALAN PATON, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY (1945) PR9369.3.P37 C7 1995

33. GEORGE ORWELL, ANIMAL FARM (1946) PZ3.O79 An

34. GEORGE ORWELL, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) PR6029.R8 N49 1992

35. ARTHUR MILLER, DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949) PS3525.I5156 A19 1957

36. ERNEST HEMINGWAY, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1952) PZ3.H3637 O1 1952

37. RAY BRADBURY, FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953) PZ3.B72453 Fah 1982

38. WILLIAM GOLDING, LORD OF THE FLIES (1954) PZ4.G63 Lo

39. C. S. LEWIS, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (1950s) PR6023.E926

40. C. S. LEWIS, TILL WE HAVE FACES (1956) PR6023.E926 T54 1964

41. ISAK DINESEN, BABETTE’S FEAST (1958) N/A

42. CHINUA ACHEBE, THINGS FALL APART (1959) N/A

43. HARPER LEE, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1960) PS3562.E353 T6 1982

44. ROBERT BOLT, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1960) PR6052.O39 M3 1962

45. J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1965) PZ3.T576 Lo3

46. CHAIM POTOK, THE CHOSEN (1967) PS3566.O69 C54 1967

47. CHAIM POTOK, MY NAME IS ASHER LEV (1972) PS3566.O69 My 1991

48. MICHAEL SHAARA, THE KILLER ANGELS (1974) N/A

49. KAZUO ISHIGURO, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1989) N/A

Documents

50 Great Works